Voodoo of Software Engineering

The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus. —attributed to Edsger Dijkstra, 1930 〜 2002.

Jamie is a notorious programer of xemacs and Netscape web browser, has written a webpage that contains codes from Netscape browser before its Open Source release. Note the profanity laiden comments and what they say. It gives a indication of the pain and f���ed-up-ness of computing industry.

Miguel de Icaza
is the man behind Linux's Gnome project and Mono project. This article is written in the era when unixes do not really have a desktop or any concept of coherent development framework. It was controversial.

Throw away all your Design Patterns or eXtreme Programming books. If you want a scientific book on software development analysis, read this book instead.

Steve McConnell. «a author of many software engineering textbooks including Code Complete, Rapid Development, and Software Estimation. In 1998, McConnell was named as one of the three most influential people in the software industry by Software Development Magazine, along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds.»

• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity1999 By Alan Cooper. amazon

This book explains away the errors of today's softwares. Alan Cooper also wrote the book About Face, on software interface design.